After Dinner Gossip. and Echoes of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXII, Issue IV, 23 January 1904, Page 16

After Dinner Gossip. and Echoes of the Week.

Exeunt tlic Bowlers. After making the welkin ring tor a week or more with the strange incantations such as "Take more green! ’ "Man, you’re narrow!” "Great Scott, a ditcher!” that form part of their cereimmiee, the bowlers have scattered themselves to the four corners of the colony till next tournament, when their peculiar rites will once more lie referred to at length in the newspapers, and elderly gentlemen in flannels and blazers of pronounced type will invade some other town. Speaking for myself, bowls has about as much fascination as a game of old maid would have for a man who liad learned bridge; but its antiquity am! the fact that it was this particular pastime in which a certain English admiral was engaged (and refused to leave) when he was called to take a voyage down channel on rather important business, make one think of it kindly. More than two hundred devotees have foregathered during the past week, and done nothing but trundle heavy spheres of wood up a lawn, only to trundle them back again; and as most of them wore staid business men there must be something in it after all. •'Much better' if t hey were at home,” sniffed one old lady as she eyed suspiciously these jolly elderly gentlemen as they skipped about the greens, joked among themselves, occasionally visited the canteen, and generally had a good time, not earing for the moment whether consols were up or down, or, in tact, "which way the boat went,” to use an expressive bit of current slang. The old lady (whose husband 1 am sure did not, or, perhaps, dared not, play this pernicious game) is like a good many more people where athletics are concerned. She cannot see what it means underneath. To me that tournament was an embodiment of one of the finest traits in a man’s character—"keenness.” You will seldom, if ever, find a duffer excelling at any game. Your man of neutral tints lias not enough character to (as some people call it) waste his lime in a tournament of bowlers. Nine •mt of every ten of the backs which last week were bent to roll a ball of wood as near as possible to another little white ball known familiarly as the "Kitty” will. I am sure, be bent during the rest of the year with just the same keenness and concentration of purpose upon objects which commend themselves to a larger circle than bowling does. The man who is not keen at some game, or who hasn’t any hobbies, is generally the sort of individual who develops into a Tomlinson —a person, it will be remembered by readers of Kipling, who was "neither spirit nor spirk. . . • neither book nor brute.” So, as the possessors of that desirable attribute • —ki enness—l, for one.say most heartily, "Au revoir” to our late guests. Tire Pcuduhim Swings Back. <)nr British taste as theatre-goers has been shockingly had of late years. AVe have been content with—nay, we have • lamourcd for—the very frothiest of frothy comedies, farces and plays for many days, but there is every indication that the time of the inevitable re-action has come, ami let us hope many generations will come and go before we hanker after the fle-h-pots of Egypt again. If we can judge front the signs of the times t]| P theatre will in the next decade or -o occupy its true position as a place til instruction, as well as a place of amusement. Don’t think, pray, that I mean merely a return to Shakespeare k*cause I believe there is a good deal of truth in Bernard Shaw’s contention that

though the Immortal William was a writer who stood alone, he was a very indifferent playwright. But there is growing up a demand (and fortunately a supply) for clean wholesome plays which deal with human nature, as it is to-day, was yesterday, and has been since the day when the first check was issued at the first theatre door. When one looks back at the farces and problem-plays that have lived and flourished during the past decade, one is astonished that t here is ftny taste left. "The Elyaway Girl” and those painted hussies her innumerable sisters and cousins, “The Notoi ious Mrs. So and So,” and her coterie of degenerates with perverted t astes ai>’ obliquity of moral vision, and “Why Jones Came Home,” with his following of equally’ inane companions, have occupied the boards so long and with such astonishing results as far as the treasury is concerned that the marvel is our taste has not got a permanent kink in it. The kink is there alright, hut it is gradually being straightened out. And, perhaps, it is only natural, because we surely could not go on forever deluding ourselves into the belief that a row of ballet girls dressed in lamp-shades, with limelight ad lib., was the acme of stage setting; or that the philosophy of “Mrs. So and So,” be she never so notorious, was worth listening to from a seat which eost us live good shillings; or that the glorified niggerminstrclisms of Jones, Smith, or even Brown, whether he left his home or took it with him, came under the category of dramatic art. Ruskin says merely because a thing is to be useful that is no reason why it should not be at the same time beautiful. So it is with the stage. Amusement is, perhaps, what we look for first, but because a play’ fulfils that requirement, is that any reason whv it should not also combine the other and higher function of the drama—to teach? Above all, a play’ should be clean, and the remarkable success of the productions of Barrie, from “The Professor’s Love Story” down to his latest offspring “Little Mary,” make one confident, when considered with other indications, small but unmistakeable. that the pendulum is slowly but surely swinging back, and that we are to have something more than scenery, limelight, and ballet dresses. o o O o o The Small-pox Scare. Whether it be one of the Gracchus microbes that has been lying perdu since that unwelcome vessel called at Port Lyttelton, or whether it be quite a newcomer, Dr. Mason doesn’t know, or if he does he keeps his own counsel. The fact remains that the elusive smallpox microbe Ims given the whole of our somewhat formidable Health Department the slip, and is now careering round the cathedral city and scaring the seven senses out of the usually’ imperturbable and ealm-faced residents of that centre. Theatrical people will tell you that a Christchurch audience is one of the most difficult things in the colonies to move, no matter whether the piece put on be the gravest or gayest. Hut the microbe has proved that under their inscrutable exterior the Plain dwellers are very human. Some people cannot understand how this dreaded malady could penetrate the wall raised round New Zealand I>y the Health Department. The Gracchus case brought to light some rather peculiar facts concerning the methods of the Department when dealing with vessels supposed to have infectious disease on hoard, but passengers cannot be treated as prisoners, and be the authorities never so careful there is always the possibility of the introduction of some epidemic. In England quarantine is practically non-existent, hence the extensive course of the smallpox when it got into

Imiulon a few years ago, and that our system, of - inspection and fumigation is of great use was proved conclusively by the fact that we practically escaped the plague and smallpox when tt'ase deplorable epidemics were raging in different parts of the Commonwealth. Now that we have this disease in tbe South Island it is to be hoped we will hear no more for a time at lea-t from those misguided people who foster anti-vaccination tendencies. True, those I have met apparently hold their convictions honestly’, but 1 do not see how they can persist in their tactics if they pay due attention to the evidence of medical men. This is surely a question for experts, and the weight of evidence is undoubtedly in favour of vaccination. There were no doubt some deplorable eases of disease transmitted by vaccination in the old days, when tlie lymph was transferred from arm to arm, but that is all altered. The Department guarantee pure lymph, and one cannot conceive how any person would allow a fancied danger to stand in the way of its use when we have in our midst such a real danger as smallpox. In the last report but one of the Health Department there were some gruesome evidences of the efficacy of vaccination in minimising the virulence of this horrible disease. There were photographs of patients who suffered in the wave that swept over London, and one would think the startling difference between the sufferings of those who had, and those who had not, been vaccinated would leave no room for doubt as to what he would do in the mind of the man who had authority over any-one likely to be in danger by reason of an outbreak such as that at Christchurch. The newspapers tell us that “crowds are flocking to tbe medical men to be vaccinated.” Sensible crowds! O O O O o More Microbes. No doubt tbe man who had just bought a bundle of fish the other day down the Queen-street Wharf, and had it pounced on by the Healt? Department, felt very much aggrieved, and wondered if he really were living in a free country. Right under the head of the wharf there is a sewer outlet, which pours into the harbour its load of unsavoury’ and unsightly drainage. Alongside fishermen clean their fish, and when some economical paterfamilias decides to brave the smiles and inquiries of liis friends and carry home a shillingsworth wrapped up in nothing more expansive than a strip of flax through the gills, the hardy’ fisherman’s mate on the wharf lowers a rope, hooks a bundle from the smack below’, souses them two or three times in the •salt water (and heaven only’ knows what else), pulls it up and hands it to the father of a family, who flatters himself that his better-half isn’t to have all the credit of finding out “bargain sales” to herself. It is very praiseworthy’ on the part of the fisherman to enable the equally praiseworthy’ parent to feel a glow of pleasure at having made a good deal, and there is no reason why’ the transaction should not be negotiated on the wharf. Dr. Makgill was equally praiseworthy in annexing the bundle for fear of the mischievous microbe. So that by’ a process of reduction we come to the conclusion that the blame rests with the sewer for being where it is. Personally’ 1 don’t think 1 should like mieroby fish even at sixpence a bundle, but if I like to purchase over the wharf instead of over the counter, it seems rather hard that the City Council should be allowed to block my efforts • at thrift. Speaking seriously, however, I wonder how many City Councillors have realised the awful legacy they are bequeathing posterity by running the sewage of the city into the harbour? At Freeman’s Bay, Qu«en-street Wharf, the Railway Wharf, the Wynyard Pier, Mechanics’ Bay, Parnell and other places too numerous to mention, there is flowing day and night year in and year out, the drainage of a town of 00,000 people. Think of the glorious time the microbes must be having round our foreshore! It is all nonsense to say that the harbour can absorb one-half what we pour into it. Here we are growing by leaps and bounds, and still we pollute "our beautiful harbour” without apparently one thought of the hideous spectre that inuot

inevitably rise up some day if we persist like a slovenly Imusi-maid in sweeping our dirt into tbe handiest oerner, where it will not be seen. Sewer outlets are officially known as “polluted areas'* —at Wellington, for instance, the fishermen are not allowed to catch fish for human consumption near Island Bay, where the sewer eomes out —and the instances of typhoid from eating oysters taken in polluted areas are well known and plentiful here and elsewhere, yet we go on blindly poisoning the beautiful Waitemata, and sowing the- seeds of a terrible crop for someone to reap. Can it be that we believe in the philosophy of. the Irishman who asked, “What has posterity done for us,” or is it that we simply don't think?